This blog is about my new Civil War history, Our War: Days and Events in the Fight for the Union.

Monday, November 4, 2013

The face of the minister's boy

Private Don. E. Scott

Anthony Mincu, who lives in Ossipee, N.H., contacted me yesterday to share this photograph of Don E. Scott. It is a carte-de-visite, or CDV, of the kind made of thousands of soldiers during the Civil War.

In Scott's case, as in those of many others, the picture was taken shortly after he volunteered. He joined the 9th New Hampshire Infantry and transferred to the 11th New Hampshire during training camp in Concord. The son of a Congregationalist minister from Warner, N.H., he was a student at Kimball Union Academy in Meriden when the war broke out.

I am posting the Scott photo here and with the earlier post I did about him. Based on his many letters to his mother, the post chronicles his service and focuses on his strong Christian beliefs and how these influenced his reputation with fellow soldiers. You can read it here.

It is still amazing to me how many CDVs are out there. When I started Civil War research in the 1990s, the internet was rudimentary. You had to search archive by archive for pictures of particular soldiers or find collectors or families who owned them. Though not perfect -- how could it be considering the number of soldiers who served? -- the development of the web has changed all that.